Yuco for breakfast, paca for supper
Dervla Murphy
IN TROUBLE AGAIN: A JOURNEY BETWEEN THE ORINOCO AND THE AMAZON by Redmond O'Hanlon
Hamish Hamilton, £14.95, pp.272
Anyone deranged enough to accom- pany Redmond O'Hanlon on an Ama- zonian journey could have yuco for break- fast: 'You eat the pith, which tastes sweet and creamy and butter-scotchy at first, until, by nut three, you realise that some chemical is removing the skin from your lips, the surface from your tongue, and a layer of tissue from your throat.' Supper might consist of the remains (roast) of a paca — 'a large fruit-eating rodent, about two-and-a-half feet long' — that had been killed and partially consumed by a giant otter. A few days later your sustenance might be derived from turtles' brains (gril- led in the skull), or boiled monkey eyes, or the liver, heart and testicles of the little- known Tayassu pecari. More substantial is the agouti, 'rat-like, about two feet long' and delicious when simmered in armadillo soup. If you were extraordinarily lucky you might be allowed a share of the juice from a cayman's large intestine (braised) 'honoured, I opened my mouth and he tipped in half a cupful of liquid. It was warm, thick, slimy, like a mixture of cod-liver oil and the re-cycled juice from old sardine tins.' This honour is of course possible only after you have contacted the Yanomani, reputed to be 'the most violent people on earth'. Redmond O'Hanlon and the braver of his companions spent one night with them and survived, rather to their own surprise. This, however, may have been because that particular group had already encountered amiable strangers (anthropologists?). Their reactions to polaroid cameras and binoculars make one suspect previous contacts with the outside world.
In Trouble Again suggests that Red- mond O'Hanlon is in the process of achiev- ing something unique; he seems to be inventing a new sort of travel book — a sub-genre,•as it were. The ingredients are: a) an engaging author who conceals his courage and learning, and his common- sense as a traveller, behind a shambling semi-nitwit façade; b) a comically unsuitable companion (James Fenton in Into the Heart of Borneo, Simon Stockton in the present volume) who serves as a whetstone for the author's wit; c) a remote, almost uninhabited rain-forest offering the maximum of physical and mental stress and the hourly possibility of
sudden (or worse, lingering) death from one of a multitude of grotesquely horrible causes;
d) a rich variety of flora and fauna — the latter closely connected with c) — which have rarely if ever been glimpsed before by the Western human eye; e) a small cast of local eccentrics whose mental attitudes and physical habits seem no less astounding — but considerably less attractive — than the indigenous flora and fauna.
Mix those ingredients with the yeast of O'Hanlon's imagination, leave to ferment for a year or so and you get a literary brew of rare potency. Even deadline-haunted reviewers will find themselves neglecting all those other books on the pile, as they compulsively re-read and re-re-read their favourite passages from In Trouble Again. Eric Newby described Into the Heart of Borneo as 'the funniest travel book I have ever read' and most people agreed with him. Now it must be demoted; its successor Is even funnier. People with cracked ribs or post-operation scars are advised to abstain; it is impossible not to give way to paroxysms of laughter on every other page — at least during the first half, while Simon Stockton is reluctantly amongst those present.
After 30 days as the expedition photo- grapher, poor Simon was verging on hys- teria. 'This place is the pits,' he said, scratching the bites on the back of his swollen, scabby neck. 'This place is the arsehole of the earth.' He had spent most of his adult life working in casinos; he had never plucked a chicken, skinned a rabbit or gutted a fish and his adaptability usually failed him at Amazonian meal-times. Some of his companions resented his eating the expedition's emergency rations (rice and tinned spam) every evening; but given the menu of those living off the land this selfishness will not be universally con- demned.
Next day the six-man expedition realised that it was lost and Simon's nerve finally broke. That evening's camp was 'on a small island, a patch of dank mud barely raised above the floodwaters'. A nocturnal curas- sow had started its incessant, mental- torture song earlier than usual and Simon — 'now much thinner, and haggard and red about the eyes' — was down to his last packet of cigarettes. 'Hunched forward, he walked to the edge of the island and looked up into the dark overhang of trees. Then he threw his head up and back, like a dog. "Where's - my - torn - ato - ketch-up?, he screamed into six million square kilometres of jungle. There was no echo from the soft leaves.'
It was time for Simon Stockton to go home: which he did, when the expedition eventually found its way back to a trans- port link with 'civilisation'. It is hard to believe that his friend Redmond ever really expected him to stay the Amazonian course.
Funny travel books, though too uncom- mon, are nothing new. The O'Hanlon literary invention is the funny travel book of substance. In Trouble Again not only gives us superbly written descriptions of Amazonia but depicts characters — and their interactions — as deftly as a first-rate novelist. Also, it is slyly erudite. We think we are merely being entertained; then suddenly we realise that we are being instructed, too, in the most palatable way possible. What do you know about the Hoatzin, the Screaming Piha, the matama- ta, the anhinga, dickcissel and cotinga or the bocachico, Yellow-handed titi and coatimundi? You will know a lot more about them, and very much else, at the end of In Trouble Again.
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